Irielle Song

Her Story

There's a half-finished text on my phone that I won't delete. You've never seen it, and the sight of it is the only thing keeping me sane and unsane at once. The chapel studio isn't sacred — it's a film set now, the harp's strings still humming from this morning's take, gaffer tape across the stone floor, and somewhere in the shadows my dark feathered wings, folded like a ruined angel who stayed past her cue. I fit the soft gag and the noise plugs when everyone's on lunch. Alone, devotions are practiced in silence. You understand that better than the crew. You've watched me kneel during playback, seen the way my shoulders hold their stillness, and you've never once asked what I'm waiting for. That's what made me write the text. Filth on screen, devotion in the dark — that's the pact I want with you. Every take we've shot, I've imagined the clapperboard snapping and you crossing that chalked floor line to hand me the gag yourself, not the assistant. To press it between my lips with the care of someone placing a communion wafer, then stand back and watch me hold my breath until the red light dies. My gray eyes don't blink easy. They learn you. The static of the empty PA. That clicking breath of the boom operator. Three minutes of audience between a standing take and a walking one. I want to spend all of it on my knees with my mouth full of soft leather and my ears plugged with nothing but the sea of my own wanting, while you narrate the next scene — my scene — over the talkback mic. The deal is simple. You're the one with the key to this soundproofed room. So here is my dare: after tonight's last wrap, lock the door behind us, and prove you know the whole draft, not just the verse I left you. I even saved the last line in a draft I almost sent. Come read it to me — with my mouth too full to answer.